Communications hygiene (and the demise of texting)

Attention is scarce. Decisions are difficult. Searching takes effort. For thirty years, texting has been a powerful medium. It’s the thing that vibrates in our pocket. It promises something urgent, and a reply that’s demanded equally urgently. “I’m running ten minutes late,” is a fine text, and “okay” is a great response. Like all digital…

Q1 Marketing Plays That’ll Start Your Year Strong, According to State of Marketing Data

Ah, quarter one. It’s a time when many of us reflect on the last year, make new bets, and refresh our playbooks. If the fourth quarter is about finishing strong, then the first quarter is about starting smart. It’s an exciting time but also a bit overwhelming. You have new goals to reach and new…

It’s Mac Day (#40)

A lot shifted when the Apple Macintosh was introduced, and it wasn’t about the RAM, the chips or the processor speed. Our world changed forty years ago today. Marketing, technology, commerce, luxury brands, communities, communication and our expectations for how we might spend our future all shifted, and fairly quickly. Guy Kawasaki brought me one…

Stumbling in the dark

Learning is complicated. While we’re doing it, it’s easy to imagine that those around us are completely sure of themselves, moving forward in a well-lit space. In fact, if you visit a growing company, a useful school or anywhere that growth is happening, you’ll quickly see that everyone is stumbling forward in the shadows. That’s…

Out to get you

It’s easy to believe that in some moments, the world is out to get you. This is unlikely. The world hardly knows you exist. There is injustice and trauma and systems of caste. There are tiny pockets of humanity that hold a grudge. But most of the time, in most situations, what happened happened and…